The present invention relates to an optical disk apparatus for connecting to a detachable drive apparatus that reads data recorded on an optical disk such as a DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) or a CD (Compact Disk) and records data.
Conventionally, optical disk apparatuses that record data such as video and audio, and read (playback or reproduce) recorded data with respect to optical disks such as CD and DVD have become commercially viable and are in widespread use.
These optical disks include CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM, CD-RW and DVD-RW for recording (hereinafter, “recordable optical disk”), and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM for playback only (hereinafter, “read-only optical disk”). Further, recordable optical disks include write-once optical disks such as CD-R, DVD-R and DVD+R, and rewritable optical disks such as DVD-RAM, CD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RW.
Thus, there exist many different types of optical disk.
On the other hand, disk playback apparatuses such as that disclosed in JP H9-17167A have been proposed.
However, conventional optical disk apparatuses are dependent on the type of optical disk. In other words, the type of optical disk that conventional optical disk apparatuses can handle is limited. For example, some optical disk apparatuses can only record to DVD-R and DVD-RW, while other optical disk apparatuses can only record to DVD+R and DVD+RW.
Thus, a problem with conventional optical disk apparatuses is that the user may not be able to read or record data, depending on the type of optical disk.
Therefore, the user must gain an awareness of the type of optical disk that his or her optical disk apparatus can handle before loading an optical disk into the optical disk apparatus. Consequently, with conventional optical disk apparatuses, the user has to worry about the type of optical disk that his or her optical disk apparatus can handle.
Moreover, the type of optical disk that the apparatus shown in JP H9-17167A can handled is limited to CD. Consequently, this apparatus has the same problem as the above conventional disk apparatuses.
An object of the present invention is to provide an optical disk apparatus configured so as to handle any type of optical disk.